


The Adventure of the Body Snatchers

by dioscureantwins



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, John Watson is Perfect, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Friendship, Sherlock is very good at disguises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5574523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dioscureantwins/pseuds/dioscureantwins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Body snatchers,” whispered a girl. “Oh, Mr Holmes. Oh, Davey…” Her eyes watered and with heaving shoulders she buried her face into her neighbour’s overcoat. </p><p>Sherlock looked perplexed. “Is this one of those pop culture things?” he asked the room at large. </p><p>John nodded and drank the last of his tea while his flatmate rolled his eyes before leaping to his feet.</p><p>“Right. I can’t think with so much stupidity in the room.” He began making shooing motions at the distraught girl and the boy who sat comforting her as well as the others. “Everybody out. John and I don’t have time for this nonsense. Out, out, all of you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventure of the Body Snatchers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Secret Santa fic exchange.
> 
> Enormous thanks to besleybean for an incredibly quick and helpful beta. Thank you, besleybean, you’re the best.
> 
> WARNING!  
> In this fic Sherlock and John chase a group of heartless, monstrously cruel criminals. Of course they catch them but the fic contains descriptions of their terrible handicraft.  
> Consider yourself warned before reading further.

“Tea?”

John stared hard at the apparition beaming at him enquiringly, an air of angelic innocence attached to its features. It templed its fingers beneath its chin in a disconcertingly familiar gesture that had John balling his fists at his side to keep them from scrunching in his eye sockets as if to check whether he were still asleep.

But no, he wasn’t. Bright sunlight spilled into the room to bounce and dance over the jagged peaks and rippling surfaces of the disaster area that was 221b Baker Street’s interior after a week without cases. The first few days John had done his best to keep the wreckage at bay, vacillating between distraction techniques and attempts at mollifying the nerves of the tempestuous natural phenomenon that lay sulking on their sofa. The sheets of sleet that had been slashing the windows throughout hadn’t added to creating an affable atmosphere. Halfway during the third outburst Sherlock had managed to combine previously unattained heights of derisive invective with an equally acerbic list of deductions why John’s last dinner date had been a total disaster. John had decided braving the severe weather outside was preferable to enduring the low pressure front brooding inside the flat and walked out into the driving rain. It had taken him three pints and two games of darts to regain a state that more or less resembled his usual equilibrium. Back at Baker Street he’d found Mrs Hudson waiting for him in the hallway with a towel and a small tin at the ready.

“Here, John,” she’d said, thrusting both items into his dripping hands. “Best dry yourself quickly or you’ll catch your death. Silly man, going out in such a downpour. Now, I know you don’t believe in them but God knows I’d have murdered him by now if it weren’t for these. Two cups will do the trick.”

And indeed the herbal soothers had helped John through the consecutive nights and days of semi-continuous attack on his mental health. He’d even fallen asleep halfway through last evening’s concert for hellishly caterwauling violin with an accompaniment of Mrs Turner’s married ones banging the walls and shouting for some peace and quiet.

After the week he’d had John considered ‘huh’ an outstandingly eloquent answer to Sherlock’s enquiry although he already knew it would be met with a verbal flood of derision. He blinked when Sherlock’s sole response consisted of raising their teapot. John now noticed it was adorned with the flowered tea cosy Mrs Hudson had crocheted Sherlock as a Christmas present, complete with carefully stitched on bees sampling the flowers. “Tea?” he repeated in an alarmingly pleasant tone.

“Yeah, all right.” Gingerly, John seated himself on his chair. The desk cum dining table between the windows had been cleared of the massive jumble it had been almost literally staggering under when John went up to bed and was bedecked with another example of Mrs Hudson’s industry, this one produced at her quilting class. Spread on top was a breakfast honed to John’s preferences. The toast in the rack was warm and an appealing even dark caramel in colour. Even better were the scrambled eggs and rashers of bacon on his plate, which he saw were cooked to exactly the state of gooeyness and crispness he continuously worked at and failed to achieve. The smell that wafted up from the tableau tickled John’s olfactory senses and resulted in his mouth watering. On the far side of the table perched his flatmate from hell, immaculate in a chalk white shirt and his tartan dressing gown, pouring John a cup of tea and commenting on the weather’s pleasantness.

“—though we may expect a scatter of rain later in the afternoon,” he babbled. “Oh, it looks like I forgot the marmalade. Or don’t you want any?”

“What?” Actually John wanted to ask who the person in front of him was and what he had done with Sherlock, but the memory of the derisive sneer cast at Lestrade when he made that particular joke the one time Sherlock had openly complimented the DI, froze the words in his mouth. 

“Hmm no, this is fine,” he said instead, picking up his fork to poke at the eggs which wobbled seductively in return. Cooked to the height of perfection. What was Sherlock up to?

“Don’t you want them, John?” Sherlock’s distress seemed genuine. John looked up to catch him frowning slightly, his lower lip on the cusp of trembling. He _knew_ that expression.

“You’re not experimenting on me, are you?” The question proved perhaps what a sick tosser he’d turned into. But then living with someone with the moral sense of a great white shark tended to blunt the gentler aspects of one’s personality. “Seeing as you were tearing apart the flat not eight hours ago,” he clarified.

Sherlock’s response was a huge eye roll. Well, that was only to be expected, John supposed.

“I was bored with being bored,” Sherlock declared. “So I decided to have a go at being normal and mundane to see whether that would stop me from being bored. So far I find the experience excruciatingly dull and your suspicious attitude isn’t exactly helping. Those are perfectly good eggs and Mrs Hudson assured me this bacon is from the best butcher in the area.” 

He crossed his arms and glared at John who mumbled “fine”, cut up his bacon and dedicated his attention to his plate. Every bite was appetisingly delicious, as was the tea, a perfect savoury blend far more delicate than their usual brew. After ten of the most satisfactory minutes John had enjoyed in a long time he wiped his lips with the paper napkin Sherlock had thoughtfully provided and shoved back his chair.

“I think this is one of your better experiments,” he told Sherlock, whose right eye twitched in a manner indicating the current line of research was shortly to be terminated. “I believe washing the dishes is a very normal thing to do,” he added and fled to the bathroom, determined not to witness the collapse of Sherlock’s attempt at ordinariness which might occur any second now.

A quarter of an hour later he nearly bumped into a person as intent on leaving the living room as John was on entering it. An extremely smelly person, John’s nose informed him, and from what he could see as the figure whirled past him, dressed in a hodge podge of clothes aimed at keeping warm rather than making a fashion statement. A member of Sherlock’s homeless network then.

“Next time you want my help you know where to shove it, Sherlock,” the man – judging by the depth of the voice – snarled.

“Always a pleasure, Billy,” Sherlock re-joined from his position behind the uncleared breakfast table. He sighed and in sheer defiance of Newton’s law of gravitation slumped even deeper in his chair. At the sound of the front door slamming shut he closed his eyes in a theatrical show of mental agony. 

“Who was that?” John enquired, a part of him contemplating whether it would be necessary to re-enter the bathroom.

“No one of importance,” Sherlock muttered, adding as an afterthought. “Unfortunately.”

As he didn’t forward further information John dug up his laptop from beneath a pile of books that had somehow materialised on top of it since he last put it on his side table, started it up and began checking his mail. The full brunt of Sherlock’s attention rested on top of his head but John had learned to ignore such scrutiny and carry on with his activities as if Sherlock didn’t exist.

“Billy Wiggins,” Sherlock announced at last in a disparaging tone. “He’s a sort of host to anyone fresh on the streets, like the walking Rough Guide to the homeless life. Helps them get acquainted with the best skips for finding food, dry sleeping places, safe places for getting your fix. A newbie disappeared a week ago. Young kid, still healthy. Bill is worried.”

“I can imagine,” John nodded. The explanation multiplied his sympathy for Bill Wiggins with a factor three at least. “So why don’t you help him? You’ve nothing else on. Except from clearing the table, that is.”

“Don’t be stupid, John.” Sherlock heaved himself up and flopped down in his chair, thrusting his long legs in John’s direction aggressively. “It’s been raining for a week. It was cats and dogs the night the girl was last seen. Any traces for me to work with have long since washed away.”

“Can’t do harm to have a look though.”

Sherlock snorted but refrained from commenting. John was still wavering between berating his friend for laziness or hard-heartedness when a notification popped up on the screen. John looked. “Oh,” he said.

“What?”

“That interview for the temp locum job on Marylebone Road. I had forgotten completely.” 

This elicited an even more withering snort from Sherlock. “I don’t see why you bother.”

John chose not to grace that observation with a reply. They’d had many bitter arguments on the subject ever since that case with the Chinese smuggling gang. Shortly after The Woman had disappeared from their lives John had logged in on his bank account to discover the staggering sum of £ 250,000 lumbering there, courtesy of ‘Her Majesty’s Treasury’. He’d returned the sum, only to have it pop up again a few days later. Thus the money had been sallied back and forth through virtual reality at accelerating speed, to the increasingly loud accompaniment of John’s exasperated grunts until Sherlock had exclaimed one day, “He won’t give up, John. And remember, the British taxpayer would have had a worse deal if we hadn’t solved the case.”

“We?” John had cried out. “You mean you. I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t even there when you figured out the code.”

“Nonsense. In mentioning names earlier when I was busy solving Bond Air you planted the seed of the solution in my mind, I just didn’t realise it at the time. Without you her Majesty’s Treasury chest would be as depleted as a platter of cake left unattended for two seconds in Mycroft’s vicinity. Perhaps now you’ll finally accept you don’t need to bore yourself to death with locum work.”

“I like it,” John had replied then as he did now. He didn’t add, “and it makes me feel useful” for that was a concept Sherlock would never grasp.

“I’d better hurry,” he said instead. In his room John changed into a neatly pressed pair of jeans, one of his better shirts and a new jumper in a bluish green hue Sherlock had lectured him was termed ‘viridian’.

“Lunch with Stamford afters,” he threw in the direction of the living room while bolting down the stairs. He still had ten minutes left and the practice was just a five minute walk from 221 Baker Street but he’d rather not arrive panting and sweaty.

Rounding the corner John noticed the sleek black Bentley slotted neatly next to a pair of red lines, regally oblivious to the angry blaring of horns from the cars that had to swerve around it. He was still at a distance of five yards from the vehicle when the driver’s door opened to reveal a suited man who proceeded to open the rear passenger door while addressing John, “If you please, Mr Holmes would like a word with you, Dr Watson.” 

A quick glance confirmed the man was recruited recently, from the SAS in all probability, given the Holmes’ penchant for dramatics. For all John’s training this man would have him flat on the ground with his hand cuffed behind his back before John had properly drawn breath to tell Mycroft he could sod off. But people habitually underestimated John’s partiality for ridiculous undertakings so instead of complying John shook his head and said, “Nope”, popping the p with relish.

The man merely smiled. “Mr Holmes told me you would say that. He also instructed me to tell you your appointment has been postponed to three o’clock and the chauffeur will drop you off at Bart’s in time for your lunch with Dr Stamford.”

“Jesus,” John muttered. Just that moment a trail of primary school children passed by, fussed over by harassed-looking teachers and bedecked in fluorescent safety waistcoats for their trek through the jungle that was London on an ordinary Tuesday morning. Reasoning he’d rather not traumatise the innocent souls by putting up a fight John acquiesced with a grudging, “fine” and slotted into the backseat.

“Hello John,” not-Anthea flashed her teeth at him over the top of her Blackberry. Her attention was back on the screen before John had opened his mouth so he gritted his teeth and settled for staring out of the window.

At long last the car rolled into the basement of one of those abandoned warehouses Mycroft favoured for their ‘little chats’ as he deigned to call these impromptu abductions.

“The lift still works,” not-Anthea informed John, thumbs busily working the pad. “Third floor and on your left.”

John pointedly did not thank her for these directions. When the doors of the lift opened his nose was hit by the smell of freshly brewed coffee. _Extremely good_ freshly brewed coffee.

“Ah, John,” Mycroft Holmes greeted him, half turned from the sideboard. John vaguely recognised the thing as art deco, if his viewings of the _Antiques Road Show_ with Mrs Hudson were anything to go by. It was situated at the farthest edge of a rug that looked like it cost more than the total amount John had earned in his life – including the Adler recompense. A pair of comfortable leather club chairs and a dainty coffee table completed the cosy setup. Mycroft arranged the silver pot he’d been filling on a serving tray heaped with a porcelain coffee service for two and a plate bearing several intricately looking cakes. His ubiquitous umbrella hung jauntily from the back of the chair on the left.

“I usually take a coffee at ten thirty, circumstances permitting,” Mycroft said, carrying over the tray. “It boosts the senses for the rest of the day, I find.” He nodded meaningfully at the chairs. “Please, John, have a seat. Though you look extraordinarily well for a man who’s just survived a week of my brother at his most stroppy. You must be mentally exhausted.”

“And how does being kidnapped help exactly?” The coffee’s aroma really was incredible.

“The beans are grown on St Helena which explains the fruity palate,” Mycroft explained. “I’d personally recommend that almond _gateau_. Just the right hint of sweetness to accompany the coffee’s slightly bitter aftertaste.”

“Look, Mycroft,” John growled. “What do you want? That is, I’m assuming you want something from me, right?”

“Really John.” It was spooky how far Mycroft’s acting abilities outranked Sherlock’s. The look he cast John was one of profound sadness, hurt even. “I surmised you’d be in for a treat.”

“How about laying off the surveillance and stop interfering in our lives? That would be a real treat,” John proposed, struggling to stuff his mouth with the almond _thing_. This required some enterprise as the concoction managed to be ridiculously sticky and crumbly simultaneously. “I don’t know how you found out about my agenda for the day, you probably read over my shoulder, but I wish you’d stop it.”

Mycroft huffed in disparagement. “Frankly, for someone who’s lived with my brother for over a year you don’t know him very well. Especially as Sherlock’s tells aren’t that difficult to unravel. Don’t worry, John, he spent three very happy hours debugging the flat from every little device I had my people install earlier this month. He even found the microphone in the bathroom. If you don’t want me to know about your tedious interactions with the rest of the world you shouldn’t leave them all over the internet. Carry a personal organiser, like every sensible man does.”

To John’s astonishment he produced a tiny _Filofax_ from his pocket. “Besides,” he continued. “I don’t understand why you object so strongly to these tête-à-têtes of ours. Enjoying a snack and some gossip; isn’t that what you regularly get up to with…” Here he peered in the diary, “…Dr Michael Stamford. Or the estimable Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade during your rowdy pub nights. Now tell me, what did Mr Wiggins discuss with my brother?”

“What?” A spray of coffee-sated crumbs spewed forth from John’s mouth. Despite some deft manoeuvring with his plate the lion’s share landed on the carpet where the dark blobs contrasted unattractively with the muted colours of the softly glowing silk or wool or whatever the rug was comprised of. 

“Oh god,” John mumbled. “Sorry about that.” 

Mycroft didn’t bat an eyelid. “Mr Wiggins, John,” he pressed. 

“Look,” John said. “Until an hour ago I wasn’t even aware of the man’s existence. I only met him on his way out. Even if I’d been present I wouldn’t tell you about it so I don’t see why you bothered bringing me here. For a man reputed to be clever you seem remarkably slow on the uptake.”

This address seemed to vex Mycroft to no end, which cheered John immensely. He bit into his cake with renewed vigour, only to be almost startled into a repetition of crumb showering by Mycroft snapping the agenda shut and jumping out of his chair with an abruptness that revealed a body control almost rivalling Sherlock’s, despite his younger brother’s claim Mycroft was nothing but a fat blob with a power complex. 

“Fine,” he said. “It pains me to hear you still favour reckless loyalty over common sense in your dealings with my sibling. And yet you strive for independence. The job is yours, John, don’t worry. But when are you finally going to choose?”

Pointedly not benefitting John with a look he took hold of his umbrella. “I trust you can see yourself out.” With that he strode away, umbrella swinging thoughtfully at his side. He went past the lift and disappeared around a corner John hadn’t even noticed.

John sighed and finished his coffee. For a moment he considered cancelling his lunch with Mike but he reasoned he could do with a breath of normality in his life.

***

The job interview ran surprisingly smooth, given the fact that the doctor conducting the interview was terrified out of her wits. John spent a large part of their conversation convincing her he wouldn’t hold it against her if she picked any of the other applicants. Neither would the wrath of the British government and all his minions rain down on her should she follow her conscience rather than their orders. Thankfully her assurances his credentials were the best appeared perfectly genuine so John’s lust for Mycroft bloody Holmes blood had waned somewhat by the time he shook hands with the promise he’d start at seven thirty am Monday next.

That didn’t keep him from yelling, “Now your brother is even meddling with my life,” first thing upon entering the flat. To his astonishment the sitting room was Sherlock-less. The faint noise from the kitchen turned out to be Mrs Hudson, elbow-deep in frothy bubbles and tutting. 

“Really, John,” she said, “I thought you knew better than to leave the breakfast plates on the table.”

“You should tell Sherlock.” For his landlady’s sake John quelled his frustration and lifted a tea towel from the rack to dry the cups and plates. “He made breakfast this morning. He tried being normal so I said he could do the washing up as well.”

“Nonsense,” decreed Mrs Hudson. “Sherlock and normal, hell would freeze over first.”

“Yeah, where is he by the way?”

“Oh, he went out shortly after you left. Came bouncing down the stairs so hard I was sure it was murder but he told me he was just going for a stroll in the park. Should I be worried?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps…” John broke off at the sound of rapid footsteps on the stairs. 

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Mrs Hudson said in sync with Sherlock’s flamboyant entry into the kitchen. His coat tails swooshed as he swept past them into the sitting room where he shed his coat and began pacing the carpet distractedly, wittering to himself.

“Found a dead body in the Open Air Theatre?” John joked to Mrs Hudson in an undertone. Sternly, she wagged her finger at him but pleased creases around her eyes belied her scolding. “John, you let him rub off on you.”

“Pot and kettle, Mrs Hudson.”

“I was _married_ to a murderer, young man. That makes all the difference.”

The upshot of this remark flew over John’s head completely so he threw her a vague smile and settled his attention on Sherlock who swirled round at his approach to growl, “Data John. I need more data.”

“You’ve got a case,” John savvied. Long experience had taught him Sherlock in his current state was too wrapped up in the details to sit down and explain what he was on about. Rather than prodding for unsatisfactory answers John reached for the remote to flick on the telly and check the news as the quickest means to unearthing why Sherlock was in such a flap. One of Sherlock’s impossibly long arms snaked in front of him to grab the device and launch it across the room.

“This isn’t the time to indulge your craving for crap telly, John.” 

“I wasn’t,” John protested. “I’m trying to find out what’s going on.”

“Everything is going on,” exploded Sherlock, throwing his hands up in the air with his patented brand of theatrical exaggeration. “Three suspicious disappearances over the last four days and here I’ve been nearly going insane from boredom.”

“Three? But you said…”

“They were all outside of Wiggins’ jurisdiction,” Sherlock interrupted him irritably. Noticing John’s bafflement he explained, “Billy can’t look after every and each one of London’s homeless. There are several gangs taking care of each other, little empires living side by side, peacefully enough most of the time but with the sporadic outbreak of war. Billy’s gang is the best organised, but occasionally I make use of some of the others. After you left I decided to have a look at the site where the girl disappeared, like you suggested, having nothing better to do. Obviously there was nothing for me to find and I was about to leave when a girl accosted me. Three other people disappeared, all young, like Billy’s girl, dragged into a van right before the eyes equally unreliable witnesses. Drunks and mainliners, totally useless. None of them could even tell me the van’s make.”

“Yeah.” John shook his head wearily.

“Oh Sherlock.” Mrs Hudson placed a tray with their mugs and a plate of biscuits on the desk. “That sounds terrible. But why didn’t they go to the police?”

“They know the police are useless. Oh.” Sherlock flicked his wrist at Mrs Hudson’s indignant expression. “Not in that sense though that’s true as well. Just remember, these are the homeless, the dredges of modern society, most of them indulging in various substances irritating busybodies like my brother have declared illegal for no good reason…”

Now it was John’s turn to interrupt. “Speaking of who, he abducted me again. He wanted to know all about your visitor.”

“Speaking of _whom_ , John,” corrected Sherlock, almost automatically. He dropped into his chair and templed his hands in front of his face, already halfway into deep thinking mode. “Mycroft wanted to know about Wiggins. What did he say? Repeat his words as exactly as you remember them.”

Repressing the urge to tell off Sherlock for his boorish remarks on the people they worked with on a daily basis John said, “he asked ‘what did Mr Wiggins discuss with my brother?’ I told him I hadn’t the faintest and that was the end of our meeting. He also bullied the doctors at the practice into hiring me. I’ve left him a rude message in the hope it will keep him from interfering.”

Sherlock flapped his hand dismissively at the suggestion. “Sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted is as necessary to Mycroft as breathing is to others.”

Mrs Hudson tutted and the hand went flapping in her direction. “Don’t you have some shopping to do? Isn’t that sherry bottle posing as a bottle of bleach beneath your sink in need of replenishment?”

John shot their landlady an apologetic look but the damage had already been done. Mrs Hudson huffed, took an arch turn and sailed out of the room with the hurt dignity of a royal advisor whose warnings are spurned. 

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock was unaffected by these proceedings. “Interested in Wiggins,” he repeated. “Hmm.” He lifted his phone out of his pocket and began working it furiously, scrolling the internet. “Put on the telly, John. If Mycroft is involving himself something must be out.” He majestically ignored John’s muttering eye roll. 

A search of the sofa and its environs yielded the remote. The television screen sprang to life to reveal a harassed-looking Greg Lestrade, answering questions in the Met’s press room with Sally Donovan at his side. A news ticker revealed Greg was updating the press about the disappearance of some MP’s young daughter. She’d last been sighted entering her room at her boarding school. Failing to appear for breakfast the next morning a girl sent up to fetch her discovered the room was empty, the bed unslept in. A day was wasted combing the grounds before her parents were alerted. These contacted the police straightaway but for a reason Greg refused to relate insisted no public alarm be raised.

Sherlock snorted. “Mycroft.”

“What?”

“Think, John.” Sherlock’s fingers were flying over his phone. “Half of Parliament dances to Mycroft’s tune. The mother is a Conservative MP. Do you really believe the first person she called was their local PC?”

On the screen Greg’s attention flickered towards his mobile, lying on the table in front of him. He startled, recovered himself and slid the phone over to Sally, mumbling something the microphone on his jacket lapel didn’t catch. After an equally startled beginning Sally’s expression quickly glided to one of annoyance. She shoved back her chair with more force than was strictly necessary and stalked out of the room, dialling a number on her own phone.

Sherlock answered at the first ring. “Sally, I was hoping to speak to Lestrade.” 

The tinny sound that seeped into the room still managed to convey Sally’s outrage. The empty place at Greg’s left hand side gaped accusingly at John.

“The press isn’t going to solve your case, Sally. As ever Lestrade hasn’t his priorities straight. I want a photograph of the girl, make it thirty copies, would you and have them delivered here at Baker Street.”

Midway through what sounded like another rant Sherlock rang off. John watched Sally striding into the room again, seating herself next to Greg and scribbling something onto a paper she slid under his nose. He cocked one eyebrow at her, obviously asking whether she had already complied.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Sherlock observed. 

“I still don’t know what you’ve done to her but it must have been bad, even according to your standards,” John replied. As he knew Sherlock wasn’t going to deliver anyway he went on, “so you think the girl disappeared twice?”

“A conjecture prior to the facts but yes, that’s what the photographs are for.”

“You don’t think this Wiggins had a hand in it somehow?”

“Other than helping the girl survive on the streets, no. Billy and I go way back, he has his weaknesses but he adheres to his own moral code which is surprisingly strict. He could teach Mycroft a lesson or two. And remember this girl isn’t the only one to disappear. There’s three others. With parents less interested in finding them...”

“So the girl wasn’t kidnapped for a ransom,” John concluded.

“Exactly. We don’t know why she ran away from school but that isn’t important. Some quarrel with her friends no doubt. The fact she was young and healthy, as were the others according to my informants, is though.”

“Oh god.” John felt his throat tighten in revulsion. 

“Probable but unlikely,” Sherlock answered his unvoiced fear. The tips of his fingers were once again neatly aligned before his mouth. “They all were English natives, a bit harder to lock up and exploit than Ukrainian or Russian kids who don’t speak the language.”

The total certainty of his tone washed over John as a wave of relief. “All right, if not that, what then?”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock replied simply. “It’s no use conjecturing before the facts so I need to assemble those first.”

The loud clang of the bell rang through the house. Sherlock shot out of his chair and grabbed his coat.

“That will be the photographs,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be gone for a few hours, John. Give Lestrade my regards, should he call.”

“But—,” John began but Sherlock’s footsteps were already pounding down the seventeen steps.

On the screen Greg was saying he’d take no more questions. John flicked off the telly. He wondered about going downstairs to unruffle Mrs Hudson’s feathers when his mobile started ringing. It was Greg.

“Why doesn’t he answer his phone?” the Detective Inspector came straight to business. 

John shrugged, belatedly realising Greg couldn’t observe him. “Out distributing the photographs of the lost girl among his homeless network. She isn’t the only one apparently; three other people disappeared earlier this week.” 

“What?” Greg squawked, “Why don’t we know about those? What else has he been keeping from us?”

“Sherlock only learned about it today. And we’re not talking about people running away from school but strays rounded off the street and shoved into the back of a van. At the moment Sherlock is trying to establish whether the girl you’re looking for is the fourth.”

“Jesus.” Greg’s shock was palpable.

“Yes.” There was little else John for John to say. “You’re welcome to wait for him here,” he offered. “I’ll orderThai.”

“Ahem, no, thanks. My in-tray is stuffed to bursting and not just with this case. Ask him to contact me as soon as he comes home, okay?”

“Okay,” John promised, after which there was nothing for him to do but order and eat his Thai and settle himself in his chair with a spy novel to await Sherlock’s return.

The flat was preternaturally quiet after the hectic storms that had raged through it the previous days and the novel wasn’t as full of beans as the back cover stipulated. John thought the fare remarkably lacking of substance compared to some of his blog entries. After a few pages his head was nodding forward, he recovered himself several times but at last he was forced to give in. The book slipping from his hand into his lap was the last thing he remembered.

***

“John!”

A heavy hand shook John’s shoulder. “John, wake up, John.” A voice John recognised to be Sherlock’s prodded him. With some difficulty John opened his eyes to see Sherlock looming over him with his jacket at the ready in one hand and John’s gun in the other.

“I hid that,” John exclaimed. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Please, John,” he huffed, “even Anderson would have uncovered your inadequate hiding place in less than five seconds during one of those ridiculous drug busts. Get ready, we have a long night ahead of us.”

“Why? Where?” John mumbled automatically while struggling out of his chair and into his jacket. “And give me that.” He snatched the Sig Sauer and stuffed it into the waistband of his jeans.

“The MP’s missing daughter. Eleanor Portendorfer, is indeed the girl abducted two days ago. What’s even better, I’ve got the exact kidnapping locations. Three girls and one boy pulled into a van south of the Thames near major thoroughfares. That indicates they’re taken out of London as fast as possible.”

“A lot of vans driving around in London,” John reflected.

“Yes,” Sherlock complied. “And a lot of drifters for them to hunt. But Wiggins and several others are spreading the word as we speak. Eyes all over the city will be on the lookout and they’ve all got our number. Still, judging by the locations I think the next strike will be somewhere in Southwark. Two people disappeared on the Ministry of Sound’s doorstep. ”

“And you want us to do what? Walk the streets at random? We might as well stay here where it’s warm.”

“Nonsense. That’ll make us lose precious minutes.” Sherlock was already out on the landing.  
Deciding complying would be easier than objecting John followed him. “Have you spoken to Greg? He wanted you to phone him as soon as you got home.”

“Who? Oh you mean Lestrade. No time.” Sherlock waved him off, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Mycroft?” John ventured. At the mention of his brother Sherlock grinded to a halt.

“Why would I phone Mycroft?” His countenance expressed sincere bafflement. 

“Because he wanted to know what you and Billy Wiggins were talking about this morning.”

“Well, he’s had all day to work out that question for himself. If he hasn’t found the answer by now he’s an idiot,” Sherlock stated and swanned through the front door. 

John sighed. For a moment he contemplated leaving Sherlock to himself and trudging up the stairs again. Another bellow of his name hauled him outside into the muted glow of the streetlamps defying yet another foggy London night. 

***

After an hour of patrolling the streets John felt sorry for not having brought his gloves. Sherlock was repeatedly rubbing his’ together in an attempt to stay warm. John shivered and pulled his collar tighter around his throat. Sincere compassion for the men and women who called these streets their home flooded his chest. 

They were ambling along the A302 in the direction of the Elephant and Castle tube station when the squeal of car tyres tore through the quietness surrounding them, immediately followed by Sherlock’s ringtone. His eyes were already darting around in search of a taxi as he answered his phone, breaking into a run in the direction of the noise at the same time.

“Black van. Tinted windows. Yes, yes. License plate number?” he shouted. “What?”

A cab approached them from behind but Sherlock was staring at his phone in furious dismay, his feet still pounding the pavement, and the taxi ignored John’s raised arm. 

“What do you mean you didn’t get it,” an irate Sherlock was growling into the phone. “Think, you moron.”

“Sherlock,” John warned between two heaving breaths.

“You’re useless,” Sherlock yelled and ended the call. “Why didn’t you flag down that cab, John?” They kept running. Several cars passed them but none of those bore the gently glowing taxi sign. John reckoned they’d covered five hundred yards when a figure sprang out of the shadows. 

“Mr Holmes,” the figure – who proved to be a young man of about twenty – cried out. “I’m so sorry, Mr Holmes but I were shitting myself and it all went so quick. They took Terry, my best mate. He was off for a piss in that doorway over there. It was—”

“Terrifying, yes,” Sherlock cut the boy short. “Any update on that license plate. Which direction did they come from? Where did they go?”

“They came from the station and went back again after taking Terry. I think the plate had a ‘B’ and an ‘A’ in it. But I’m none to sure. I never did well in school—”

“Obviously.” Sherlock brushed off the boy and began avidly tapping on his mobile. John murmured some words of sympathy. “…and we’ll find your friend,” he was saying when Sherlock barked: “Mycroft, I want you to stop bothering John and I need access to the CCTV-cameras covering the A302 and every major route south of it.”

His expression was one of intense dislike and impatience as he listened to whatever the British government was telling him.

“I’m actually helping you, Mycroft, so stop expostulating and just give me the footage,” he snarled after a while. The boy was staring at him open-mouthed. “We’re on the A302 now between Hayles Street and Elliott’s Row. Looking for a black van, tinted windows, plate featuring a ‘B’ and an ‘A’. Time was eleven twenty. Be quick about it.”

“He tends to get a bit excited,” John explained just as Sherlock ended the conversation with a swipe of his thumb.

“Got what you wanted?” John asked. As expected he got a distracted hum for an answer. “Still want a taxi?”

At that Sherlock looked up. There still wasn’t a cab in sight and the flow of traffic remained dismally low. 

“We haven’t time to wait for a cab,” Sherlock said and strode purposefully towards the road on their right and the line of cars parked along the curb, attention still intent on his phone. John gave the boy’s shoulder a last reassuring pat, nodded at him and hurried after his friend.

When he caught up with him Sherlock was checking each of the cars methodically, scrutinising the doors and the cars’ interiors. 

“Sherlock, what…” John hissed when Sherlock lingered for a few seconds at the driver’s door of a battered Morris Minor. In the streetlamps’ orangey glow that barely managed to penetrate the darkness its exact hue was difficult to define.

“Shut up and get in,” Sherlock hissed back, slithering into the car and reaching over to open the passenger door. 

“We’re stealing a car,” John said, shaking his head in disbelief but seating himself into the passenger seat nevertheless. The floor beneath his feet was a mess of discarded wrappers, several of which immediately clung to his shoes with the insistency of family members one’d rather avoid, and used Kleenexes. “We’re actually stealing a car. Greg is not going to like this.”

“Lestrade? Not his division,” Sherlock countered. “Besides, we’re not stealing it, only using it temporarily to make a citizen’s arrest. Now shut up. Your prattle is annoying and I need to concentrate.” Head bent, his hands were fumbling beneath the dashboard. Air whistled through his teeth. After ten seconds the engine ignited. Sherlock grinned and laid his right hand on the steering wheel. John wanted to screw his eyes shut but Sherlock was jabbing him in the chest with his elbow and holding out his mobile.

“Here, check the CCTV and direct me. Remember, black van, tinted windows. Mycroft will have the footage in a few seconds.”

The car shot out of the parking space onto the street, narrowly avoiding a collision with a car approaching from behind.

“Fuck, Sherlock,” John shouted over the din of a blaring car horn.

Sherlock tutted. “Language, John.” The next instant John had to brace himself with his free hand against the dashboard as Sherlock accelerated and the Mini leapt forward with a mighty roar of its engine and the speed of a jaguar closing in on its prey, swerving around the vehicles before them. Sherlock never even blinked.

“Stop looking like a rabbit and make yourself useful,” he instructed. “I suspect they went straight to the A23 but there’s always the possibility these people are actually clever.”

“Right,” muttered John. Jumping out of the car was as certain an invitation of instant death as remaining seated, it would just arrive sooner. He peered at the screen of Sherlock’s phone, which showed their surroundings with a black van with the number LB 52 ZAR in the middle. He hissed. 

“That’s our van,” Sherlock comprehended. “Sometimes having Mycroft for a brother has its advantages. Which way?”

“Uhm—” Luckily, after more than a year as the world’s only consulting detective’s flatmate John was an old hand at getting up to date with the latest spyware while simultaneously stalling fears for his life and crushing qualms about appropriating someone’s – admittedly not cherished – possession. “A23,” he determined. “They’re ten miles ahead of us and exceeding the speed limit with twenty-five miles an hour.”

“Ha.” In virtual reality the sheer severity of Sherlock’s disdain would have fuelled the Mini straight through the sound barrier. The laws governing actual reality limited the vehicle’s maximum speed to ninety miles per hour, no matter how hard Sherlock gripped the steering wheel and pressed the accelerator. 

“We’re losing them.” 

Sherlock’s answer was a grunt of frustration. “No, we’re not. We’re just taking longer than I’d like to.”

They raced on, the Mini’s every bolt and screw shuddering with exertion. The van was a brand-new Mercedes, its driver as single-mindedly pursuing an instant driving ban as Sherlock but at superior odds. A nifty little app in the mobile’s left-down corner faithfully recorded the increasing distance between the futuristic black Teutonic monster hurtling through the darkness and their pitiful hansom designed for shopping on a lazy afternoon. The rear passenger door on John’s side began rattling ominously. 

“A22.” 

Save for the occasional swerve around the vehicle of a law-abiding citizen the van kept speeding along in an almost straight line, ignoring every junction. Any second John expected blue flashing lights to pop up, either on-screen or behind them but the damp weather appeared to favour both them and the kidnappers. 

“Shouldn’t we ask the police for assistance,” John forwarded.

“What for? We don’t want to arrest them, we want to know where they’re headed.” 

John had to concede Sherlock’s answer made sense. Silently he apologised to the unfortunate Mini owner who would soon find a dismal number of speeding tickets in his letterbox.

South of the M25, shortly after taking the Oxted junction the van suddenly disappeared. 

“It’s gone,” John breathed. 

“What?”

“The van. It just…vanished.”

“Ah. Excellent.”

“What?”

“Just think, John,” said Sherlock. “Either they’ve reached their destination or they’re switching transport which will make them lose precious minutes—” Sherlock’s leg trembled with the effort of another hopeless jab at the accelerator, “—and leave us the van at least. Keep a lookout for another vehicle.”

Nothing happened except for John joining Sherlock in gritting teeth after staring at an empty screen for what felt like an eternity. Twenty-eight minutes later Sherlock’s foot hit the brake and he dimmed the lights.

“We’re in the middle of the road,” John protested. 

“Stop stating the obvious. Look where they can have turned off.”

It was pitch-dark, the road unlit and the moonlight barely managing to penetrate the clouds’ thick cover. After a few seconds John’s sight adjusted to the prevailing darkness.

“There, a gate on the left,” he pointed.

“Open it, John. And give me my phone.”

John did as instructed. It was heavy work for the gate was of a sturdy construction and the hinges could do with some oil. The muddy soil beneath his feet squelched audibly. As he pushed at the gate he felt his feet slipping and the icy-cold sludge sloshed over the edge of his shoes and sank through his socks to his skin. Those shoes were a write-off. And he’d bought them two weeks ago. Damn Sherlock and his demands.

Magnificently unaware, Sherlock drove the car through the gate and jumped out, scanning their surroundings. They were on the edge of a field, which stretched away to their right. Deeper darkness on their left indicated the presence of a copse. An owl screeched in the distance. The only other sound was the soft swish of the drizzle slowly saturating John’s hair.

“Flashlight?” Sherlock enquired in an undertone. He’d produced his own from the depths of his pockets. John fished the small _Maglite_ habitually carried these days out of his jacket pocket. 

The beam of Sherlock’s flashlight skimmed the ground; searching for tyre tracks John presumed. Apparently Sherlock had soon found what he was looking for. He cut to the chase like a whippet after a hare, oblivious to the field’s less than ideal conditions. After a hundred yards he went straight for the undergrowth, where his torch revealed a small trail that barely fitted two people walking side by side. A sweep of the beam at shoulder height revealed a sorry scene of broken branches. Sherlock snorted in satisfaction.

The van stood in a small plantation of taxus trees, hidden from the unobservant eye by a loose screen of branches. John tried each of the doors. They were all locked.

“Right. What do we do now?”

“Unlock the doors,” Sherlock replied calmly. “Switch off your light, John.” He’d taken off his gloves for greater dexterity as his fingers flew over the screen of his mobile. Seconds progressed into minutes. John glanced about him uneasily. Sherlock’s face bathing in the soft glow of his phone provided the only source of light. The all-encompassing blackness started to work on John’s nerves, reminding him too much of the dark hours prior to the attack that had cost him his army career. 

At long last a faint electronic beep sounded John’s salvation. The tweed of Sherlock’s coat brushed John’s hand as his friend moved past him to open the backdoors. Bright light flooded the darkness, temporarily blinding John. When he’d finished blinking he gasped at the sight of the van’s interior. It showed a state of the art ambulance, with only the stretcher missing. John goggled at the abundance of equipment.

“Bloody hell.”

“Quite.” Sherlock had already donned a pair of nitrile gloves and was hopping on one foot, putting a disposable overshoe onto the other. After placing the shod foot into the van he put on the other one. 

“Bloody hell,” John said again.

“You keep a lookout, John.” Sherlock was already rifling through drawers, checking surfaces for stains and fingerprints, collecting hairs with a tweezer and relocating them into evidence bags. He worked fast and methodically.

“Ketamine. They drug them on the street. Never stand a chance. They want them safe and healthy. No expenses spared, the London Ambulance Service would bounce of the walls if they got their hands on this equipment.”

“But where are they? What’s it doing here in the middle of the woods? Where’s the stretcher? Did they vanish into thin air?” John was baffled and Sherlock flitting around excitedly ratcheted his frustration several notches. 

“Exactly,” Sherlock crowed. “John, did your teachers ever compliment you for asking all the right questions? Probably not. I suppose they were idiots.”

“Some of them,” granted John. “But—”

Sherlock was already on the forest floor, the beam of his _Maglite_ running over the mulch of last year’s fallen leaves, moss and small twigs.

“There.” The spot his finger pointed at bore a remarkable resemblance to its surroundings. “We’re done here.”

After closing the doors of the van and relieving himself of the overshoes he set off into the darkness, choosing the same path they’d already travelled judging by the broken branches. 

“The boy was strapped to a gurney. See the tracks? Quite deep because of the mud. We’re in luck it rained so much last week,” Sherlock babbled.

The mud squelching in John’s shoes with every step begged to differ but at least his feet had by now warmed the stuff. Out on the field again Sherlock appeared to lose the trail. He frisked about, crouching close to the ground and muttering to himself in uncanny imitation of a bloodhound chasing a fox. Suddenly he was off like a shot, John hurried to keep up and nearly collided when Sherlock stopped just as unexpectedly as he’d started.

“Helicopter.” He gestured towards the ground, the beam of his flashlight highlighting the two longitudinal lines of flattened grass. “Hold the light.”

John guided the _Maglite_ while Sherlock measured the length of the lines.

“Ambulance helicopter,” he determined. “Obviously.” 

John swallowed. His stomach felt decidedly queasy all of a sudden. “So what do we do now?” he asked, helplessly.

“Now we go home and find out where that helicopter went,” Sherlock decided. “Come on, John.”

***

John had braced himself for _The Fast and the Furious_ Sherlock-style part two but he needn’t have worried. Sherlock’s mind was obviously on a higher plane than the A22 and they coasted along the road at a steady fifty-nine miles an hour. 

Shortly after entering the city Sherlock pulled into a gas station. John stared at him in amazement.

“Not stealing,” Sherlock said and dedicated himself to fuelling the car with the detached absentmindedness the average motorist exuded while similarly occupied. 

The ‘acting normal’ experiment was an astounding success, John mused. He couldn’t wait to share the story with Greg over a pint of beer. Too bad he still hadn’t figured out how the camera on his phone worked. Greg might demand solid photographic evidence.

“You can contact Lestrade tomorrow to cancel those speeding tickets.” Sherlock folded himself behind the steering wheel again. John almost jumped in his own chair, wondering for the umpteenth time about Sherlock’s mind-reading capabilities. 

Sherlock sniffed. “Please, John, today you discovered I can perform mundane tasks as well as the next idiot. Of course you’re dying to tell Lestrade.” 

Denial was useless. Besides, John was too tired to even contemplate it.

The Mini’s parking space was still empty. The second Sherlock threw the car door shut a cab appeared as if summoned by magic. 

Back at Baker Street John truly felt his exhaustion. Sherlock however, had perked up considerably and was rubbing his hands in satisfaction while booting up his computer.

“Best catch as much sleep as you can, John,” he advised. “Looks like we’ll have a full day ahead of us.”

Long experience had taught John it would be no use prodding his flatmate about next day’s schedule so he wished Sherlock a good night and went up to bed.

***

John came down the next morning to find the flat full of people. Mrs Hudson was bustling around the four members of Sherlock’s homeless network seated at the kitchen table, refilling their mugs and urging them to eat their eggs and sausages while Sherlock sat staring down what John assumed to be the ringleaders in the living room.

“We only want to help, Mr Holmes,” one of them was complaining.

“No,” Sherlock answered in a voice that brooked no further argument. “Ah, John,” he greeted. “Did you find my note?”

“Note? No.” John looked longingly at the mugs of hot tea everyone but Sherlock was cradling in their hands. Thankfully, Mrs Hudson once again proved herself to be an absolute saint and came hurrying towards him with a mug and a plate. Sherlock glared at both items.

“It’s on your door with instructions to pack an overnight bag. Our cab arrives in half an hour.”

“Fine.” The tea was still too hot to drink so John dedicated himself to reducing the contents of his plate first.

“Why can Dr Watson go and not us?” another member of Sherlock’s network said. “It’s our mates that are taken.”

“Who are taken. And yes, exactly,” Sherlock confirmed. “Sentiment is an obstacle, not an asset when it comes to investigation. No, you stay here and watch each other. No doubt they’ll try snatching someone again this evening.”

A collective shiver ran down everyone’s spine at Sherlock’s choice of verb, save of course Sherlock’s spine and perhaps Mrs Hudson’s. The change of atmosphere in the flat was palpable. “What?” Sherlock asked, petulantly.

“Body snatchers,” whispered a girl. “Oh, Mr Holmes. Oh, Davey…” Her eyes watered and with heaving shoulders she buried her face into her neighbour’s overcoat. 

Sherlock looked perplexed. “Is this one of those pop culture things?” he asked the room at large. 

John nodded and drank the last of his tea while his flatmate rolled his eyes before leaping to his feet.

“Right. I can’t think with so much stupidity in the room.” He began making shooing motions at the distraught girl and the boy who sat comforting her as well as the others. “Everybody out. John and I don’t have time for this nonsense. Out, out, all of you.”

***

“Where are we going?” John asked as the cab turned into Marylebone Road. 

“Isle of Wight,” came the immediate reply.

“Isle of Wight? But the van had a London license plate? Shouldn’t we try finding the owner and speak to him first?”

“Not really, unless you’re interested in means of financing online gambling debts. Mr Jones is a tenant in one of Barking’s less salubrious council estates and yet listed as the owner of an extensive fleet of cars, featuring two Bentley’s and a Rolls in the DVLA’s lists. He’s of no interest to us. Lestrade can deal with him.”

Apparently Sherlock hadn’t slept at all but spent the night hacking into various databases and personal computers. For a brief instant John felt guilty about letting Sherlock do all the work before remembering that unlike Sherlock he actually lived on regular bouts of sleep and three meals a day. If he adjusted his lifestyle to his friend’s he’d definitely be of little use to him.

“But he’ll know these people,” John argued.

“He’ll know his contact’s false name, and the contact will know _his_ contact’s false name. Following that trail is what the Met would do. Unlike them, we’re actually clever.” At these last words Sherlock beamed at John, clearly containing him in his small selection of people who were actually astute. Normally John would have been flattered to be considered thus but since he was flailing about in darkness as deep as last night’s all he felt was a nebulous apprehension.

***

“So, what’s on the Isle of Wight?” 

The train was rumbling out of Waterloo Station, the carriage swaying from side to side as it negotiated the points. The motion had no visible effect on Sherlock’s texting capabilities, his fingers danced over the phone at their usual nimble pace. 

“Did you pack your swimming trunks?” he asked.

“What? No!. It’s March, the sea will be freezing.”

“Pity. Our hotel’s indoor pool is heated to a comfortable twenty eight degrees. Year round.”

Sherlock’s eyes twinkled over his phone’s rim. “We won’t have much time to savour the amenities but we can always stay an extra night if you’re so inclined. Mycroft is footing our bill so there’s nothing to keep you from combining business with pleasure.”

“We’re going on a holiday?” John asked, incredulous. “Why, Sherlock—”

“Of course not,” Sherlock sighed, his forehead furrowing in a frown of irritation. “Do keep up. The hotel is simply situated closest to our destination, the Lord of Wight Private Medical Clinic.”

“I see.” Though John really didn’t. As ever, Sherlock was quick on the uptake.

“A helicopter, John. Remember that van’s interior; it resembled a small operating theatre. Why transfer your booty to a helicopter if you’ve got such equipment at disposal. Your young and _healthy_ booty. That we’ve been assuming has been snatched at random…” 

Here Sherlock paused for dramatic effect, regarding John expectantly. 

“Except they probably weren’t,” John supplied helpfully.

“ _Very_ probably, yes.” 

“But that girl that went missing what… a little over a week ago?”

“A lot can happen in a week,” Sherlock waved off this objection. “Mycroft’s cameras aren’t the only means of surveillance of London’s streets.”

“Jesus.” John needed some time to let that sink in. Steadily widening patches of greenery provided a restful décor for the increasingly distressing thoughts tumbling through his head. 

“But what would a private clinic want with stray youngsters living hand to mouth on the streets?” he asked Sherlock’s reflection in the window.

“Now you’re asking the right questions,” the face answered and disappeared as its owner bent over his mobile again. John’s phone blared the shrill beep that announced a text message.

“I’ve just sent you the link to their website. You’re the doctor. Tell me if you spot anything unusual in the services they offer.”

***

The Isle of Wight didn’t remotely resemble the photographs in the tourist brochures John had sampled aboard the ferry. In those the Isle basked in the golden glow of a perpetually shining sun. In actuality it was covered in the kind of dense fog the BBC never managed to conjure quite convincingly for their annual Christmas Dickens dramas. The moisture sank its teeth into John’s jacket. Ten yards out of the ferry terminal and he was already shivering. Sherlock, wrapped in his coat and scarf, appeared oblivious to the weather as he funnelled down the taxi rank.

The hotel was an ostentatious affair that instantly reminded John of Mycroft. Oddly, this didn’t perturb Sherlock in the least. He glided across the plush carpet towards the reception desk with the smooth ease of a sea otter jiggling its way down a kelp forest.

“What’s your handicap?” he turned towards John in the elevator.

“Handicap?” John echoed. “I thought you didn’t go for the obvious. My shoulder…”

Rolling his eyes Sherlock interrupted, “I was talking about golf, John.”

“Golf? I’ve never touched a golf club in my life.” 

“There’s a first time for everything. That’s a saying, isn’t it? Meet you in the lobby in half an hour.” Sherlock flounced into his room and closed the door firmly in John’s gaping face.

What on earth did people wear on a golf course? John carried a manly disregard for the ‘sport’, flipping the channel the moment it was announced on _Sky Sports_. In the end he decided an extra T-shirt underneath his current outfit would have to do.

Downstairs the vast atrium was empty save for one other guest who sat perusing a copy of the _Isle of Wight Country Press_ while impatiently jiggling a ridiculously long tweed-clad lower leg. As John walked towards the reception desk the newspaper was lowered and the guest addressed him.

“You’re one minute and thirty three seconds late.”

John stared open-mouthed at the man who’d stolen his flatmate’s face and was now casting him a withering look out of it. The man sighed.

“Is that really the best you can do, John?” he enquired in a voice so posh John briefly struggled to unravel what the man was going on about. One eyebrow nearly touched the brim of his cloth cap. 

“Christ,” John dredged up from the bottom of his heart. “You look like Mycroft on a visit to Balmoral.”

“Nonsense,” Sherlock countered. “Mycroft would never go for a hound’s tooth pattern.” The wide trouser leg’s tweed flared as he pivoted and marched off towards the entrance. 

“Wait.” John hurried after his friend. “How are we going to golf without clubs?”

“The hotel is inordinately proud of its links, John. They’ll happily furnish us with something to chop up their turf.”

The bored teenager manning the shed on the course’s entryway did indeed perk up at their request, motioning for them to follow him to the back.

“They won’t let me play World of Warcraft, you see,” he chatted while skipping in front of a wall that held clubs in every imaginable size, “ ’cause the WiFi’s been useless ever since that clinic next door opened last year. Guests have been grumbling and everything. But they could let me have a telly at least. I’m bored stiff sitting here all day.”

“I know the feeling,” John agreed sincerely. In the corner of his eye Sherlock was testing a club and appearing far too knowledgeable about what he was doing to John’s taste.

“Right,” John said once they were standing on what Sherlock had told him was the first hole’s tee. “I haven’t the faintest why I’m here and what you’re at so I suggest you go first.”

“For heaven’s sake pay attention, John.” Sherlock implored the skies with his eyes. Due to the fog the overall effect lost some of its momentum. “We’re here to play golf, obviously.”

“Fine,” John gritted between his teeth. “Show me how it’s done then.”

“Look.”

Sherlock positioned the ball on the tee, took one step back, wiggled his hips and adjusted the golf club until his arms and the club ran in a straight line between his shoulders and the ball. Then he swung both arms sideways and whacked the ball, launching it into a graceful arc across the grass and a small artificial brook. Shortly after John lost sight of the white spherical object, as it blended with the milky-white mist hovering closely to the ground.

“Hole in one.” Sherlock didn’t even bother tampering the smugness in his tone.

“How can you possibly know that?” groaned John, continuing as this question met yet another massive eyeroll. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an impossible git?” 

“Possibly,” Sherlock murmured. “There’s really nothing to it. Hand eye coordination and strength. Any four-year-old could do it. Even Mycroft has a single figure handicap.”

Right. John was a crack shot and he doggedly went through his push-ups and sit-ups regimen every morning. This shouldn’t be too difficult. He went through the motions Sherlock had performed, down to the ridiculous hip shimmying, swung his arms the way Sherlock had and missed the ball by half a foot at least.

Right. Or, not right at all, not with Sherlock hovering three paces behind him and watching his every move. Swearing under his breath John concentrated, stretched his arms and decked at the ball with a mighty swipe. The club head struck the earth some five inches short of the ball, launching a minor sand storm in the process.

“Goddamn’ ”, he swore, loudly this time. 

“Concentration, John,” Sherlock advised. “That’s what the game is about.”

“Look,” John rounded on his flatmate, tightening his fingers around the grip. The excessively posh accent was beginning to drive him round the bend. “I don’t know why you’re intent on this stupid game while we should be working on a case but could you please shut your trap and dispense with the unwanted advice.”

Sherlock shrugged. “As you like. But we haven’t got all day so I suggest you try one last time before we aim for the next hole.”

For a brief instant John wavered between striking the prat on the head with his club or just chucking it on the ground and stalking off. The first seemed the more tempting option, especially as Sherlock’s eyes were twinkling with mischievous amusement. However, John prided himself on being the more sensible and stable of the two of them. So instead he resorted to heaving a deep breath of clean healthy seaside fog and following the trajectory Sherlock’s ball had taken earlier.

Sherlock caught up with him, swerving aside a few yards later to retrieve the ball from the hole. He flipped it up in the air once before stashing it in his pocket.

“We have the links to ourselves thanks to this mist,” he said in his normal voice. “A blessing and a nuisance. Let’s hope it will work to our advantage. Any thoughts on the website, John?”

“Huh.” John was still silently stewing and wholly unprepared for the change of subject.

“The clinic’s website,” Sherlock clarified. “That’s why we’re here, John. Not to play golf. I’ve always loathed the game.”

“You seem bloody good at it,” John commented bitterly.

“I practised a lot.” At John’s enquiring glance he sighed, “Think John. I can’t well afford Mycroft beating me at anything even remotely considered a type of physical activity. For obscure reasons wholly outside the realm of logical thought belting a ball and trudging after it while waffling about politics is considered a sport. Can you imagine the gloating if Mycroft would be better at it than I am?”

John’s first instinct was to dismiss the story as one more anecdote in the ongoing annals of Holmes sibling warfare. Then the memory of Harry’s face _gloating_ after she’d beaten him once more at Monopoly popped up. He nodded solemnly. “I see.”

“Thank you.” It sounded as if Sherlock actually meant it. “Now, website.”

“It looked quite ordinary to me. They cater to the crowd that can afford to give the NHS a wide berth. Lots of very specific cosmetic surgery but that’s to do with the location, I suppose. Have a holiday and your eyelids lifted, that sort of thing.”

“Hhm,” Sherlock said. “We’ll see.”

Their route had brought them to a chain link fence along which they were now travelling.

“What’s there then?” John asked.

“Those are the clinic grounds,” replied Sherlock. “Do try to look like you actually know what golf is about.” He began hacking at the low scrub separating the grass from the fence, muttering to himself. The term ‘rogue ball’ appeared occasionally. All in all his impersonation of the upper-class twit of the year ferreting a stray golf ball was close to perfection.

On the other side of the fence a part of the mist materialised into a figure. As the figure neared John was astonished to watch it develop into a man shouldering a rifle and holding a chain at the end of which a German shepherd was straining forward violently. The man’s garb was camouflage, clearly top of the bill, but his stance told John he wasn’t military or even ex-military. Sherlock appeared oblivious to the man’s presence, tackling the shrub in mounting frustration. 

“Can’t find it,” John queried in his best la-di-da accent. If anything he sounded like Boris Johnson on acid, but it would have to do.

“Don’t see where the blasted thing’s gone off to,” Sherlock answered, the grand brogue back in full force. He squinnied straight at the guard. “I say, my dear fellow, you don’t happen to have come across a golf ball, do you?”

Startled by the direct address the man yanked at the chain. The dog yelped, bared its teeth and began barking furiously. Sherlock twitched in very convincing fear.

“This is private property,” the guard shouted over the din. “You’d do best to stay away from the fence.”

“You’re most rude,” Sherlock squeaked, making a show of backing off. The guard retained his stance. When John looked back over his shoulder he was still glaring after them.

“What now?” he asked in an undertone.

“Now they’re assured they’ve frightened us away and we can finally begin our investigation,” Sherlock replied, veering towards the fence again. 

They followed the barrier. On the other side shrubs and the occasional large tree drifted like islands in the sea of mist, blocking the view of golfers on the clinic terrain. After a few hundred yards Sherlock ground to a halt.

“It must be somewhere around here.” He delved into his jacket pockets, drew out two pairs of small binoculars and handed one to John. “Large building, about two hundred yards away,” he said.

This early in the spring most of the shrubs were largely leafless. John peered through the binoculars, adjusting them until he had clear vision, then started scanning the area behind the stroke of foliage. At last the square shape of a building emerged; painted white it was almost invisible in the milky fog. A sharp hiss beside him told him Sherlock had discovered the building as well.

Methodically sweeping his binoculars past the wall John counted three windows, all painted white as well. The height he measured at roughly twelve feet but it appeared to be quite long, spanning over a hundred yards. As he searched the top of the building he felt his heart leap into his throat and nudged Sherlock in the side.

“There, on the roof,” he whispered.

“Oh yes.” Sherlock’s voice oozed satisfaction. “Well spotted, John. That proves it then.”

“Proves what?”

“Later,” Sherlock answered in an undertone. “Let’s find out if there’s a pattern to their surveillance.”

He had scarcely finished speaking when a man with a dog rounded the corner of the building. Their dark outline contrasted sharply with the all-pervading whiteness. Sherlock checked his watch. John did the same.

During the next hour the same corner was turned four times by an identical pair. By this time John’s fingers were frozen to his binoculars and his eyes felt like they were stuck on the end of sticks. His damp clothes no longer helped his body contain the warmth it produced but siphoned it off and he was clamping his jaws to prevent his teeth from chattering. How Sherlock, who was nothing but muscle and bones, could remain so motionless for so long was beyond John. 

At long last Sherlock lowered the binoculars.

“We’ve seen enough.” 

John heaved a sigh of relief.

“Tweed, John,” Sherlock remarked. “Impractical in Antarctica but eminently suited to the inclemency of the British weather.” 

He fished a few white threads out of his pocket and affixed them to the mesh wire. “There,” he said, “we’ll return here tonight. Now let’s go back to the hotel. Our preliminary investigations aren’t over yet.”

***

“So, what is in that building?” John asked half an hour later, lifting a tea cake spread liberally with raspberry preserve to his mouth. They sat in the lounge in a pair of comfortable club chairs facing a lovely warm fire and John was beginning to feel his feet again.

“I’ve no idea,” Sherlock admitted surprisingly honestly. “Given the security I suspect the MP’s daughter and her homeless friends but it could equally well be some celebrity who doesn’t want the paparazzi to find out about their liposuction job.”

John snorted and almost choked on the piece of cake he’d just bitten off. “Those men had rifles.”

“You’re right. Someone is desperate to keep something locked on the inside or outside, but that isn’t our first concern now. Getting inside without raising a general alarm is. Those dogs are our main worry. Thankfully you have an appointment at the clinic in three quarters of an hour. Best finish that tea quickly so you can go change.”

***

A quarter of an hour later John opened the door to his room to find an effeminate, overly enthusiastic assistant in the corridor. Sherlock’s hair was parted in the middle and drooped artistically on either side of his face. A scrunchie cerise-pink cravat billowed in ample waves down and into his buttoned jacket. 

“Oh, Mr Norton,” he squealed in a voice at least two octaves higher than his usual range. “This won’t do at all!” With a playful shove at John’s chest he pushed him back into the room. 

“Have you never put on a wig before?” he asked in his normal voice, tugging mercilessly at the outrageous riot of auburn shoulder length curls John was sporting. “And that shawl! Really, John.” Quick hands flew beneath John’s chin and when he looked in the mirror the rainbow-coloured silk shawl Sherlock had presented him with earlier sat around his neck in a naff bow that virtually screamed for attention. This had the advantage of paling the sunglasses on his nose – which John had thought unbelievably tacky – into the essence of modesty and good taste.

“There,” Sherlock said, voice dripping perverse self-satisfaction at the result of his lugubrious handiwork. “Much better. Shall we go, Mr Norton? Your car is waiting for you.”

Indeed a sky blue Jaguar Mark 2 sat purring right at the hotel doorstep, the chauffeur standing to attention next to the rear door. Sherlock steered John towards the car and fussed installing him into the backseat, then waited impatiently for the chauffeur to open the front passenger door. 

The clinic grounds turned out even more extensive than those of the hotel. They drove for almost a mile along carefully manicured lawns and cultivated borders before pulling up in front of an elegant opaque glass façade. 

“There’s no need to wait,” Sherlock told the chauffeur and began ushering John inside with fawning deference.

The lobby they entered outdid their hotel’s in sumptuousness. Amidst a jungle of exotic palms a fountain burbled soothingly. Comfortable low sofas in pale-silver velvet were sprinkled across the white marble flooring, glowing like barges in a fairy tale on the ocean of white marble floor tiles. A reception desk that had floated straight down from the starship Enterprise hovered on the right.

“We’ve an appointment with Dr Vance-Blackwell, daahling,” Sherlock squealed at the receptionist; one of the most beautiful women John had ever laid eyes on. Under different circumstances – if he weren’t looking like a seventies rock star long past his heyday – John might seriously have tried dousing her with a select whiff of John Hamish Watson charm. However, as a soldier John recognised a lost battle. The woman scrunched her pretty little nose at Sherlock in undisguised distaste before plastering a bright smile to her lips.

“Good afternoon and welcome to the the Lord of Wight Private Medical Clinic. Certainly. Your name or time of the appointment, please?”

“Oh, my name is Everett Puscat, but I’m not the reason we’re here to see Dr Vance-Blackwell, thank God,” tittered Sherlock, directing a meaningful glance at John. “Our appointment is at four sharp, daahling.”

“Right.” The fake smile threatened to slip from the woman’s face. Pretending to check something on her computer she stole several quick squints at John, plainly searching for a match between him and a long list of minor and major celebrities she was running in her head. John wondered what Dr Vance-Blackwell’s specialism was and what he was supposed to be ailing from. Sherlock hadn’t told him.

At last the woman decided she couldn’t keep them waiting much longer without raising suspicion. Cold-shouldering Sherlock she smiled at John, “You’ll find urology on the second floor, third corridor on your left. The lift is over there or you can use the stairs, which you’ll find around the corner, here at the back of the reception desk. Thank you for visiting.”

“Thanks daahling. We’ll take the stairs. Must watch those kilojoules,” Sherlock shrieked and turned to John. “If you please, sir. After you.”

Fuming inside, John strutted to the staircase; another scifi glass construction. Once the glass (what else?) door to the lobby had fallen shut behind them he tore into his flatmate.

“Urology! What the hell are you playing at, Sherlock. I’m not going to drop my undies for a case.”

“The name’s Everett, Mr Norton. Don’t you remember?” Sherlock screeched. Whispering, he continued, “Whyever not? I would. You never struck me as a prude, John.”

John opened his mouth to share his exact opinion on unnecessary exhibition of the naked male body but was cut short halfway. “Your worries are unnecessary. That receptionist and you share the same one-track mind, together with ninety-nine percent of the general population.”

He heaved a dramatic sigh that advertised his disgust with humanity at large and hospital receptionists in particular. “Dull but useful. Now when Dr Vance-Blackwell contacts her because we don’t turn up in his waiting room she’ll send security after a very distinctive-looking celebrity with a sex problem and his aggravating assistant, leaving us with plenty of time for a little snooping and a proletarian shopping expedition.”

“You want us to go stealing again?”

“Yes. Remember it’s for a good cause. We can always reimburse them through a donation later. But we’ll have to do something about those dogs. I’d already planned this visit but those animals were an extra incentive.”

Sherlock ignored the door to the second floor. At the third floor he halted to study the hospital ground plan that hung to the left of the door. From his pocket he produced a _Boots_ carrier bag.

Untying his tie and stashing it into the bag he said, “We’ll work our way downwards from the top floor. The dispensary is on this floor. Are dogs allergic to ketamine?”

“I’ve no idea,” John answered truthfully.

“We’ll just have to take our chances then. Give me that shawl and wig and sunglasses, John. You look utterly ridiculous.”

“Thanks to who,” John grumbled. 

“Whom,” Sherlock corrected automatically. John glared at him but all Sherlock said was, “Ruffle your hair, it’s flattened.”

They rearranged their clothes and hair and went up to the fifth floor, the bag dangling casually from Sherlock’s left hand. 

“There are probably cameras everywhere,” he warned with his hand on the door handle. “Try to look as if you’ve business being here.”

The corridor they entered was empty. A look at the label next to the first door they passed taught John they were in the maternity ward. Sherlock set them a quick pace, seemingly taking no notice of their surroundings. 

Halfway along the corridor a large cluster of artfully arranged tropical plants bravely carried on war against the sickening hospital atmosphere. Pretending to admire the arrangement Sherlock dropped the _Boots_ bag amongst the leaves, which swallowed it as eagerly as a collection of carnivorous plants. Five yards on they skirted a corner and nearly bumped into a pair of nurses. 

“Apologies.” Sherlock threw them his normal-people smile and strode on, John hurrying in his wake. 

They criss-crossed the fifth floor without anyone accosting them. Sherlock apparently had the building’s ground plan by rote. The surrounding sounds and smells reminded John nostalgically of Barts and every other hospital he’d ever worked in. It was hard to imagine anyone working here participating in brutal abduction. That helicopter could easily be a trauma helicopter, employed to save people’s lives. The rifle-carrying guards were a bit more difficult to account for…

“Keep up, John,” Sherlock hissed. “There’s nothing here. We’ll go down to the fourth floor.”

They made their way back to the outlandish staircase. When Sherlock tried the door to the fourth floor he found it was locked. He rattled the handle but to no avail. 

“That’s odd,” John remarked. “And against safety procedures. Imagine—”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock cut in. “What’s worse is that we now have a choice between crossing the fifth floor again or going back up from the third. Hmm. Third first, and return to this floor via the staircase on the other side of the building.”

The third floor was a bit busier than the fifth with visitors and personnel. The number of people milling about was still a far cry from the multitudes filing through the average NHS service but after the eerie quiet of the fifth floor the bustle had a relaxing effect on John. Thus he was taken unawares when Sherlock poked him sharply in the side, muttered, “Dispensary” and fell into a swoon, long limbs flinging in every direction and effectively blocking the hallway. A woman screamed.

John stared down bewildered at the prone form shuddering on the floor before remembering their purpose. He thundered into the dispensary without knocking and buttonholed the first white coat he saw. 

“Please… my friend… outside...”

“What?” There were three persons in the room, now all centring their attention on John. 

“Sir, what’s wrong?”

“My friend has suddenly fainted. Please come quickly.” 

The two people closest to the door hurried outside while the third made straight for John.

“No please,” John warded him off. “My friend needs your help.” He gazed around the room and discovered a chair nearby. “I’ll sit here and recover from the shock.”

Unfortunately the man took his calling seriously and he squandered precious seconds accompanying John to the chair. The second he was gone John leapt up to frisk the cabinets. He managed to unearth a bottle of chloroform, some ketamine and a couple of hypodermic needles and was back in the chair when the accommodating apothecary returned.

“Your friend appears to be okay again,” he said. “He’s refused us examining him, claiming he hadn’t had anything to drink since breakfast. He’s out there enjoying a cuppa now. Can I fetch you anything?”

“No.” John shook his head. “Thank you. I’ll go see how he’s doing.”

In the hallway the other two apothecaries hovered over a sheepish-looking Sherlock perched on the edge of a seat cradling a plastic beaker of tea in his hands. The small crowd of onlookers had already dispersed; no doubt disappointed the promising drama had fizzled out into a solo of a man meekly sipping tea.

“I’m so embarrassed,” Sherlock sighed. From the looks the duo exchanged over his head it was clear this had been his pat phrase since ‘regaining’ consciousness.

“There really is no need,” one of the apothecaries said. “And here’s your friend. Now if you’re sure you don’t want a proper check-over—”

“Oh no, I’m afraid of needles. And you’ve been so kind, providing me with this delicious tea,” fawned Sherlock. That appeared to be the last straw needed to send the pair scurrying for safety. The teacup ended up in another helpful clump of foliage next to Sherlock’s seat.

“Have you got the supplies?” a miraculously recovered Sherlock asked.

“Yes.”

“Excellent. We’re off for the fourth floor then. Might as well take the lift.”

On the fourth floor Sherlock unerringly led them to the locked-off corridor. Here they encountered a pair of double swing doors. John pushed against one of the vertical push plates but the door didn’t budge.

“No use.” Sherlock nodded meaningfully at the middle of the doors and the lock snugly fitted there. 

“But,” John said, staring at the standard swing doors. “Doors like these never have locks.”

“Exactly, John. You’re scintillating today,” Sherlock commented. “And yet these do. What are we to make of that?”

“That we can’t get in,” forwarded John. 

“As can’t anyone else who doesn’t have a key,” added Sherlock.

“You can always pick the lock.”

“Are you seriously suggesting I engage in a spot of breaking and entering, Dr Watson?” Sherlock enquired, one eyebrow lifted archly.

“Seeing as you’ve already coaxed me into getting a five-finger discount I don’t see why not,” retorted John, adding, “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” Sherlock confessed. “But breaking into this ward is too likely to draw attention and we’ll probably learn more visiting that outbuilding tonight. We’re done here for the moment.” He pivoted sharply on his heel and headed back to the lift. Downstairs the opening lift doors revealed the receptionist locked in urgent conversation with a man in a white coat and a couple of innocuously clad men whose backs might as well have written ‘security’ over it in neon-pink lettering. 

“Good,” Sherlock uttered. “You first, John.”

John traversed the lobby at what he hoped looked like a purposeful gait rather than making a run for it. Once outside he sprinted another hundred yards before he dared breathe freely again. Night was falling fast, further densifying the fog that glowed mutedly in the circles of light thrown by the streetlamps. Sherlock popped up out of the darkness at John’s right-hand side but John was too tired to be caught on the hop. 

“I want proper food and a bed,” he said. “Or I’ll be no use to you tonight.”

“If you must,” Sherlock conceded ungraciously. In the scant light he looked as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he’d been that first evening after they’d just met, during the pink suitcase case. John thought of the indolent ennui victim who’d been recumbent on their sofa until yesterday morning and decided that this version of Sherlock was just as tiring but ultimately far preferable to the stroppy teenager model. 

***

The torch’s beam disappeared into the darkness, together with the heavy chop of helicopter rotors. They’d been crouching in the darkness for over an hour, waiting for the helicopter to depart and counting the beat of the guards’ circumventions.

“Right,” Sherlock whispered. “I’m going to cut the netting now.” 

To John’s overly sensitive ears each snap of wired metal announced their presence as loudly as a full blast of heavy metal played for a demented audience of hollering fans. 

The excellent hotel food sat heavily in his stomach, as a stony reminder of the sinister flavour their hospital visit had left him tasting in his mouth. True, apart from the shut off ward and stuck-up ambience the overall atmosphere had been as impersonally friendly as that in any other hospital. The apothecaries they had duped had been as solicitous as one would expect, but as the evening progressed those locked double doors gained momentum in John’s mind until they rose before him like the gates of Hell itself. A tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered he’d been a hop, skip and a jump away from evil of the blackest kind. He’d faced the same premonition in Afghanistan a few times and each time his instincts had been spot-on. He still suffered from the nightmares to prove it.

“Stop distressing yourself, it’s annoying,” Sherlock muttered. “There, already done. Help me.”

Together they folded over the wire to create a hole big enough for them to wriggle through. A branch lashed John’s cheek unforgivingly and he winced in pain.

“Five minutes till the next one,” Sherlock said. “We’d best leave these bushes now. Have you got everything at the ready?”

“Yes.”

They cleared the undergrowth and waited, flattened on the damp grass. The cold moisture seeped through the fabric of John’s jeans.

“Now.”

The instant the word left Sherlock’s mouth the flicker of a torch beam came weaving past them. John launched himself to his feet, chloroformed rag at the ready and dove for the dog. Shaggy fur brushed his hands. It was over in seconds. Both man and beast were momentarily incapacitated.

“Quick,” growled Sherlock. Hoisting the man under his armpits he started dragging him back to the bushes and through them to the fence. John followed, carrying the limp dog’s body in his arms. 

Working by the light of their torches which they held in their mouths they bound the man’s wrists and ankles behind his back and gagged him before positioning him on his side with his back to the fence. Then they muzzled the dog and tied its paws. They’d barely finished before Sherlock said in an undertone, “Next one in three minutes.”

Over the next hour they repeated the process three more times, after which they lay waiting for a quarter of an hour for the next one to arrive. Nothing happened.

“Right,” Sherlock announced at last. “That’s the first part almost over with.”

They crept back through the bushes. Sherlock relieved the men of their rifles, located several small knives, handguns, phones, radio equipment and headsets and checked their bindings while John injected each of them with a small dose of Ketamine. They put the used needles, weapons, phones and other equipment save for a headset and radio for each of them and a pistol for Sherlock into the rubbish bin bag Sherlock had ‘lent’ from the hotel and hid it among the bushes.

So far everything had been going exactly to plan. However, as Sherlock had confessed he still had no idea what they would find once they’d rounded the building they were now out in the woods. The pitch-dark woods. John trailed his fingers along the wall as he silently trod on Sherlock’s heels. The darkness remained after they’d turned a corner, not a glimpse of light escaping from a window to guide them along. Upon rounding the next corner their eyes encountered the feeble light of a tiny bulb protruding from the wall above a solid wooden door. 

“Entrance?” John asked in an undertone.

“Yes,” Sherlock replied quietly. “That light’s a nuisance.” He bent at the waist and the moment he came up again swung his arm. The bulb exploded, rendering the darkness absolute.

“Golf,” John understood. 

“Yes.” Sherlock sounded amused. “Let’s wait for a while.”

They stood shivering in the foggy night but all John’s ears discerned was the shrieking of an owl in the far distance.

“I think it’s safe.” He prodded Sherlock in the small of his back.

At the door Sherlock halted and switched on his torch to reveal a lock and, inserted into the wall beside it, a keypad. Sherlock produced his magnifier and began scrutinising the keypad in the light of his torch, accompanying himself with a steady stream of _sotto voce_ mutter.

“Nine digits. And everyone as careless as the late unlamented Miss Adler. Let’s see. Most residue of oil on the four, then the five, so that’s two digits accounted for. How many digits in the code? One, two, six, seven and nine all clean so four-digit code it is. Hmm, the eight looks slightly less clean than the three. Right.”

He punched the four, five, eight and three in rapid succession and was almost hit in the nose by the door swinging open of its own accord. Bright industrial light spilled outside. John caught the door and held it open for Sherlock to slip through and followed after, pulling it shut with extreme gentleness.

For a few seconds he stood blinking as a deer caught in the headlights. His eyes adjusted to the strong glare of overhead lights reflected in the shiny white of the walls paint and the equally white floor tiles lining the long passage they were standing in. For a brief moment John wondered whether they’d scaled an industrial plant.

“Opri! Cine eşti tu? Ce faci acolo?” A man in a long white coat had appeared out of nowhere and was fastly approaching, training a gun on them with a trembling arm.

“Ei bine, am vrut doar ša întreb,” Sherlock said and dived for the man’s knees. The man shrieked and waved the gun, obviously not accustomed to handling the weapon. John wrestled it from his hand into Sherlock’s waiting one and immobilised the arm, simultaneously clamping his other hand over the man’s mouth. 

Sherlock had resurfaced and was now addressing the man in the foreign language. The movement of the man’s lips against the palm of his hand told John the man was determined not to cooperate.

“ _I_ don’t speak the lingo but he _won’t_ ,” he informed Sherlock.

“Rumanian,” Sherlock replied curtly. He elevated his arm and took a dead aim between the man’s eyes. 

“Spune-mi. Give him a chance to speak, John,” he said. 

“Are you certain?” Unwillingly, John lowered his hand a fraction. The man drew a deep breath and launched into a torrent of incomprehensible sentences. Sherlock interrupted the stream several times, nodding his head and finally motioning the man to silence.

“He’s a night nurse, claims to be the only one in the building,” he told John. “A colleague will take over in three hours. We’d do best to bind and sedate him. He’s hardly the brains behind this outfit, just a despicable lackey.”

He raised his arm and struck the man savagely on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. The man groaned and collapsed against John who staggered back from the impact himself and was forced to let go of the body. It slithered into an untidy heap on the floor.

“Hey, stop it!” John shouted. “Have you gone off your rocker?”

Sherlock was looming over the unconscious form, pulling deep breaths into his chest and his pulse point beating visibly in his neck. “Almost,” he panted. “You take care of him, John.”

“But what—” John tried as he tugged the man’s arms behind his back and began tying them but Sherlock shook his head. “Not now. Have you done it?”

“Yeah.” John gave his handiwork a last check-over. The man would hardly be able to move, let alone raise the alarm. “Where do we put him?”

Sherlock skimmed the corridor and made a beeline for a door that looked no different from the others to John. “Here,” he said. “Best put him with the rest of the rubbish.” 

John considered that especially offensive, even for Sherlock but he silently arranged the man on top of the bin bags. His flatmate’s behaviour of the last few minutes worried him and his unease increased when he looked up and saw Sherlock was definitely pale around the nose.

“Are you all right,” he enquired, by now genuinely concerned.

Instead of answering Sherlock strode off and disappeared through the second door on their left. John breathed deeply and sprinted after him. 

The room he found Sherlock in was scarcely lit, necessitating John’s eyes to yet another quick adjustment. Once they had adapted themselves, he took in that they were standing in a rectangular space that probably ran over the whole building’s length. The room’s opposite end split up into narrow cubicles through curtains hanging from ceiling rails. Each cubicle contained a hospital bed and the equipment one expected to find in an intensive care unit. As John scoured the set-up he slowly realised he actually was standing in the middle of a giant intensive care unit. Most beds were empty but a couple of beds near the centre were occupied. Sherlock was standing next to one of these, gazing at the prone form on top of it.

“It’s actually true,” he said in the gravest tones John had ever heard him utter when he joined Sherlock. “The idea passed my mind when we discovered those helicopter tracks yesterday evening but I dismissed it as too outlandish. Goes to show one should never eliminate the improbable as being impossible.”

“What?” John asked, too apprehensive of his friend’s strange behaviour to spare a thought for the supine figure on the bed.

“I wonder whether even Moriarty could think up something this cruel,” Sherlock continued his discourse while his hands brushed nervously at the bed’s top sheet. To John’s consternation he appeared to be blinking back tears. His sigh expressed an infinite weariness. 

“ ‘What a piece of work is a man!’ Dear God, the Bard never wrote words more true. John, I apologise for all those times I’ve called Anderson a brainless idiot. For even his brainless idiocy is infinitely preferable to the devilish mind that created this ward.”

“Sherlock?”

His friend didn’t acknowledge him. “Have a look at the chart, John,” he directed instead. 

John did as he was bid, peering blindly at the letters that danced erratically in the half-light. Even after re-reading the sentences three times he couldn’t make head nor tail of the message they purported. Unless they’d inadvertently crossed an invisible barrier and were wandering a parallel universe where people adhered to a code of morals rejected in the world John had known.

He went over the information again, checked dates and operations, looked at the figure whose chest calmly rose and fell.

“I…” he stammered. “I… Sherlock, they’ve taken out a kidney, a lung, the retinas, the liver… this… how…”

“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed. “They’re harvesting Eleanor Portendorfer’s organs. As well as those of the other wretches here.”

“But why?”

“For money, obviously. What other reason is there? On the one hand you have desperate rich people ready to dig deep into their purses for a kidney, on the other hand these beggars just ruining their perfectly fine and healthy kidney with drink and drugs. Nobody will miss them, you’ll be doing the community a service rounding them off the streets and making good money out of them. It’s the perfect solution.” 

“Bloody hell.” John felt sick. The fact that Sherlock didn’t look much better offered no comfort at all. He already knew he was in for many long sleepless nights, not counting the ones he would wake up in a sweat. This coolly calculating industrial efficiency was far more depraved than all the senseless violence he’d witnessed in Afghanistan.

“What do we do now?”

“This building is a fortress. We begin by making sure no one gets in except Lestrade. Mycroft will send in his men as well, can’t be avoided. Might actually be of some use in this instance. Lestrade can send in the Hampshire Constabulary, have them lock up the place, find out what’s in that ward. Meanwhile you and I will search this place. See if we can find the names of those responsible.”

“Do you think the whole clinic staff…?” John didn’t want to end the question for the notion was simply too grotesque.

“Hardly likely. Everything is too thoroughly organised and the bigger the group the bigger the chance of having to deal with a conscience. Unless they’ve partaken in a little extra murdering on the side.”

“Christ!”

“Yes. It’s…” Whatever Sherlock was going to say was bound to remain a mystery for he cut himself short. “I’ll ring Lestrade while you contact my brother, John. He’s always so worried about me. You can tell him what we’ve been up to and have him pressurise Lestrade’s colleagues a little to ascertain the ugly minds that invented this scheme don’t escape.”

***

The three hours they waited for Greg and Mycroft to fly in were the longest of John’s life. After relocking and barricading the door they searched the nurses station for information on the brains behind the organisation. The place proved to be conspicuously empty of paperwork. Sherlock dedicated himself to hacking the computer sitting on one of the desks. 

While he worked, John went back and forth between the station and the ward to check on his friend’s progress and the condition of the youngsters attached to the machinery. Slowly but certainly he accepted they were doomed. The knives that had been taken to each of them, though surgeons’ scalpels, had condemned them to death as categorically as a stab delivered in a seedy back alley. John’s nails dug deep in his palms as he paced from one bed to the other, his helplessness and outrage making him want to shout in frustration.

On his fourth march back to the nurses station the loud noise of Sherlock barking into his phone hit him like a fresh breath of normalcy. His friend’s voice bounced off the eerie white walls, reading a list of names and addresses. He ended the call just as John entered the room and remained staring at the computer screen with eyes that John knew for once observed nothing. Every now and then his fingers twitched and his knees bent in preparation for an energetic leap and dramatic dash for the door and search for a cab to deposit him on the principal villain’s doorstep. Each time he slumped back into the chair, clearly reminding himself his post was here beside John, to guard the human evidence of the horrible crime he’d brought to light. 

At long last Greg phoned to ask John to open the door for them. He greeted John curtly and at his question confirmed the arrest of the people whose names Sherlock had given him. Accompanying Mycroft was a Crown Prosecutor. After hearing John’s testimony on the condition of the five silent bodies in the ward the man had an urgent whispered conversation with Mycroft in a corner. The words ‘illegal’ and ‘court order’ leapt up intermittently, together with ‘medical consultation’. Sherlock glared at his brother throughout the conversation but John had the feeling Mycroft was the one arguing to let heart rule the head. At long last the Crown Prosecutor yielded and gave John leave to inject them with morphine and switch off the machinery that was keeping them alive. 

Both Mycroft and Sherlock were more subdued than John had ever seen them before. After a heartfelt ‘Bloody fucking hell’ Greg had refrained from further comment. He kept shaking his head and muttering to himself, only stopping to rest a heavy comforting hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. 

“Well done,” was all he said. For once Sherlock didn’t shrug and accepted the compliment. 

***

Two weeks later John came down the stairs to find his flatmate perusing the morning papers and waited upon by Mrs Hudson. The cheery light of April slanted through 221B’s windows, heralding the first balmy spring day. 

“Good morning, John,” Sherlock greeted in a breezier voice than John had heard from him for the last fortnight. “Slept well?”

“Excellent,” John replied truthfully. For the first time in two weeks the floating visions of that ward from hell hadn’t clamoured for entry in his dreams. “Mrs Hudson, those scrambled eggs smell like heaven.”

“Flatterer,” she giggled. “You want some?”

“You’ve turned into a mind reader, Mrs Hudson.”

“Men and their stomachs. Doesn’t take much to read their minds,” Mrs Hudson said, ambling to the kitchen. “I’ll give you a cuppa first.”

She returned with the teapot which was wrapped in Sherlock’s tea cosy. John looked at the thing and felt his stomach turn.

“What’s wrong?” Mrs Hudson came from very far away. “John?” Hastily putting the teapot on the table she reached for John’s hand. Sherlock had risen and his quick glance was darting between John, Mrs Hudson and the teapot.

“It’s the tea cosy,” he deduced. “John associates it with our ghastly adventure on the Isle of Wight. Why? Oh, because I first used it on the morning Billy visited.”

“Yes,” John confirmed weakly, too put-out to even be properly amazed at Sherlock’s extraordinary retentive capabilities which had led him straight to the right conclusion.

“Oh dear.” Mrs Hudson blanched. John managed to leap up just in time to grab a chair for her to fall into with nervously fluttering hands. “Oh John, I’m so sorry, if I’d known—”

“But you didn’t,” Sherlock said. “So you can stop the apologies, just get rid of the cosy and serve John his tea.”

“Sherlock!” Mrs Hudson and John exploded simultaneously.

“What?” Sherlock raised an eloquent eyebrow. Then he grabbed the teapot, freed it from the cosy, opened the window and threw the cosy outside.

“Oi! Watch it!” an angry voice floated up from the street.

Sherlock pushed the window a little higher and bent the upper part of his body over the sill.

“It suits you,” he remarked, closed the window again and held the naked teapot aloft.

“Tea?” he asked.


End file.
